Since a number of people will be missing the data collection class this week, I’m setting up a make-up class next week for them. Stay tuned. Also, if you have not signed up for the class google group, please do so now so I can conveniently email you. You can do it by visiting:

[The new Education Secretary] has indicated that he will use the carrots and sticks in the stimulus bill to support voluntary efforts to write national standards and to prod states to adopt them. This process should involve advisory boards that represent employers, college admissions officers, military recruiters, teachers, education scholars and parents. It should also be ongoing, because the standards will have to evolve as the needs of the workplace and global economy do.

For example, I learned a lot of calculus, which hasn’t proved that useful in my career. But I do remember being confronted at a Time Inc. meeting on digital strategy with the simple question of how many direct two-way links there were in a fully connected network of 50 nodes. It was a long time before any of us could figure out even how to begin figuring it out. Tomorrow’s careers are likely to require more knowledge of networks, probabilities, statistics and risk analysis. That’s why it would be useful to have the standards-setting body be advised by recruitment officers from the infotech, biotech, medical and, yes, financial sectors.